Tag Archives: ryan budget

The Senate’s Vote-a-rama: Paul Ryan and GOP House FAIL

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The Hill: The Democratic-controlled Senate appears set to approve its first budget resolution in four years. Votes on amendments to the budget began Thursday night, with a final vote set for late Friday or early Saturday.

Brian Beutler explains why tuning into CSpan2 this afternoon to watch the Senate’s “vote-a-rama” could be very educational:

“…before the Senate passes its budget this weekend, it must first get through “votearama” — the quirk in the budget rules that essentially opens the amendment floodgates to eager lawmakers.

These amendments, like the budget itself, aren’t really binding. They’re highly politicized. And because there hasn’t been a Senate budget in a few years, there’s a huge pent up demand among members for using votearama as an opportunity to preen and take political stands. [...]

For instance: Last night, Senate Dems put Republicans on the spot and forced a vote on the House GOP budget. It failed, obviously, but because it’s the GOP’s central organizing manifesto, nearly every Republican member voted for it.

What went mostly unnoticed, though, is that Dems also forced the GOP to take a position on the single most politically contentious part of the Ryan budget — its call to replace the Medicare guarantee with a private insurance subsidy. That amendment was written to put members on record over whether to prohibit such a dramatic policy change. And by a vote of 96-3 the Senate answered that question with a resounding “yes.” Only Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul voted to effectively endorse Medicare privatization.

That says a lot about the politics of the Republican platform. Their commitment to a fiscal policy agenda they know to be politically toxic in its particulars is actually pretty impressive.

Democrats, by contrast, voted to preserve the tax increases their budget calls for. And they will circle their wagons around the Affordable Care Act when Republicans try to use the budget process to significantly undermine it. But on the particular, narrow issue of the ACA’s medical device tax, more than half the party joined the GOP in support of an amendment that called for its repeal…”

How bad was Paul Ryan’s night? Joan McCarter on March 22, 2013

Every Senate Republican but three voted to repudiate Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan. The three? The three teabaggiest of all: Rand Paul (R-KY) Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ted Cruz. …The slap-in-the-face vote was cast yesterday as the Senate continued working on its 2014 budget, an opportunity for all sorts of political hay-making, because budget rules allow for unlimited amendments. This one was offered by Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) Thursday night. It’s a “No Vouchers for Medicare” amendment, repudiating the Ryan budget and “to prohibit replacing guaranteed benefits with the House passed budget plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program.” The Senate voted overwhelmingly for it, 96-3.

Ryan’s budget as a whole fared a little better. Republicans really didn’t want to have to vote on it, but Patty Murray made them, by offering it as one of the first amendments. It failed, 40-59.

“There seemed to be some resistance among my Republican colleagues in bringing up the House Republican budget for a vote. And it’s pretty easy to see why that is. The House Republican approach has been thoroughly reviewed and just as thoroughly rejected by the American people.” — Patty Murray, twisting the knife last night.

Paul Ryan’s star is definitely fading. Last year, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) was hailed as the man with a plan to save America. Today, barely half of his own party thinks highly of him. According to a Rasmussen poll released Monday, Ryan’s approval rating has plummeted since the November election. In the poll, only 35 percent of likely voters said they had a favorable view of him, while a 54 percent majority said they viewed him unfavorably. That’s a stunning reversal from last August, when 50 percent of voters liked Ryan, versus 32 percent who did not.

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Also: The 39th time was not the charm on Obamacare repeal | Steve Benen on March 22, 2013: 

Remember when the 2012 presidential election ended the debate over repealing the Affordable Care Act? To a degree that is truly comical, congressional Republicans didn’t get the memo.

The Senate on Friday rejected another GOP attempt to repeal President Obama’s healthcare law. An amendment to the Senate budget resolution from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) failed on a 45-54 vote on Friday. Cruz’s amendment would have repealed the Affordable Care Act and encouraged patient-centered reforms to reduce costs.

Senate Republicans knew Cruz’s amendment was pointless, and knew it wouldn’t pass, but literally every GOP senator voted for it anyway — just because. [...]

To listen to Republican rhetoric on Capitol Hill is to hear a series of complaints about President Obama: he’s not being “serious” enough about getting things done… But it’s against this backdrop that Republicans vote, over and over again, to repeal a health care law they know won’t be repealed. They do so, in part because they have a radicalized base that expects near-constant pandering, in part because some of their leaders have broader ambitions and see these tactics as useful, and in part because these votes just seem to help Republicans feel better about themselves.

Michele Bachmann will be so upset. Literally! 

Some have the repeal count up to 54 times, with more attempts (yes, plural!) to be offered today.

On Obamacare’s Third Anniversary, Here Are Three Ways The Reform Law Has Helped Real Americans

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Also Rand Paul, the winner of CPAC, is sponsoring a far-right extremist  amendment to have the U.S. withdraw from the U.N.  Not only is that a terrible idea for several reasons (one being economically), but “a recent poll showed that eight in ten Americans believe that the U.S. needs to maintain a strong relationship with the United Nations.”

And get this: Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) “is planning on filing an amendment to the Senate budget resolution making it impossible for any gun control legislation to pass the Senate without a two-thirds majority—a standard currently reserved for the ratification of treaties. (That’s an even higher threshold than that imposed by filibusters, which can be broken with 60 votes.) ”[I]f the Lee amendment is passed, the practical effect will be that gun control can never again pass the Senate,” the far-right Second Amendment group Gun Owners of America boasted in an email to members on Friday. Lee’s amendment won’t pass. But the fact that Republicans would consider carving out an entirely new voting threshold just for gun control legislation tells you just how little ground they’re willing to concede, at least publicly, on this fight.”

More excitement (haha) at CSpan2!

Mitt Romney said federal disaster relief is an “immoral” debt, “makes no sense at all”

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Mother Jones: With Hurricane Sandy set to make landfall in the Mid-Atlantic, Mitt Romney’s policies for federal emergency management seem as relevant as ever. And the candidate’s budget, as described below, isn’t the only indication Romney would slash funding: As the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim noted, the presidential candidate suggested during a GOP primary debate that he would diminish [FEMA's] role and leave responsibility for helping imperiled Americans to the states.

Huffington Post: [Mitt Romney was asked by John King, the debate moderator] if FEMA should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.

Mitt Romney: “Absolutely. Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?…”

John King: “Including disaster relief, though?”

Romney: “We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.”


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Mother Jones (cont): “The Ryan budget makes no mention of FEMA or the Department of Homeland Security of which it’s a part. In fact it makes no mention of any specific cuts to non-entitlement programs. We can’t say for sure, in other words, the extent to which disaster funding would be scaled back. But the overall math suggests that it would be drastic. The Ryan budget proposes reducing total non-entitlement spending from 12 percent of GDP to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2050. As my colleague Kevin Drum put it:

Defense spending alone amounts to 4% of GDP, and it’s vanishingly unlikely that this will ever fall much below 2-3% of GDP. This means that all domestic spending will decline from about 8% of GDP to 1-2% of GDP by 2050. That’s prisons, border control, education, the FBI, courts, embassies, the IRS, FEMA, housing, student loans, roads, unemployment insurance, etc. etc. It’s everything. Whacked by about 80% or so.

“[...] the GOP ticket’s likely cuts to disaster management and weather forecasting budgets would come at a time in which, fueled by climate change, natural disasters are becoming increasingly more potent and expensive. There were 14 billion-dollar disasters in the United States in 2011—the most on record.“

It’s all part of the austerity measures that Mitt Romney / Paul Ryan would implement to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy and greater military spending than is necessary. Those things, to Mitt Romney, are not an “immoral” debt — those debts makes sense to Mitt Romney.

Those are the Republican Party’s priorities — what are yours?

Romney and Ryan’s super-awesome budget plan will remain a secret until after the election

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From ABC’s This Week transcript (h/t: politicususa):

STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you make the math work without eliminating the big deductions that middle-class families rely on?

RYAN: Well, first of all, that — those claims have been pretty discredited. There have been five different studies –

STEPHANOPOULOS: How have they been discredited?

RYAN: — that show — that this — that this plan works. So the analysis you’re citing wasn’t even an analysis of the Romney plan.

But here’s the point I am trying to make here, George. We think the secret to economic growth is lower tax rates for families and successful small businesses by plugging loopholes.

Now the question is, not necessarily what loopholes go, but who gets them. High-income earners use most of the loopholes. That means they can shelter their income from taxation. But if you take those loopholes, those tax shelters away from high-income earners, more of their income is subject to taxation. And that allows us to lower tax rates on everybody — small businesses, families, economic growth.

Here’s where the president wants to take the country. He wants to add a job-killing small-business tax increase on top of the current code, add even more loopholes and deductions to the code, more Washington picking winners and losers. That will crush jobs. You have to remember, George, that most of our small businesses, they pay their taxes as individuals. Most of our jobs come from these successful small businesses. So we’ve shown — look, the Princeton study, the Harvard analysis, they have shown that you can lower tax rates, broaden the tax base, and, yes, there is still room left for broad-based policies that the middle class enjoy so that nobody has a tax increase. We just stop picking winners and losers in the tax code.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But, Congressman, as you know –

RYAN: When Reagan did this, it worked –

STEPHANOPOULOS: — many say it’s difficult –

RYAN: Go ahead, George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: — to accept your word if you’re not going to specify which tax loopholes you’re willing to close. Don’t voters have a right to know which loopholes you’re going to go after?

RYAN: So Mitt Romney and I, based on our experience, think the best way to do this is to show the framework, show the outlines of these plans, and then to work with Congress to do this. That’s how you get things done. The other thing, George, is–

STEPHANOPOULOS: Isn’t that a secret plan?

RYAN: — we don’t want to — no, no. No, no. What we don’t want is a secret plan. What we don’t want to do is cut some backroom deal like ObamaCare, and then hatch (ph) it (ph) to the country.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But why not specify the –

RYAN: We want to do this –

STEPHANOPOULOS: — loopholes now?

RYAN: — out in the open –

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why not say right now –

RYAN: — because we want to do this –

(CROSSTALK)

RYAN: — we want to have this — George, because we want to have this debate in the public. We want to have this debate with Congress. And we want to do this with the consent of the elected representatives of the people, and figure out what loopholes should stay or go and who should or should not get them.

And our priorities are high-income earners should not get these kinds of loopholes. And we should have broad-based policies that go to middle-class taxpayers, to make sure we can advance things that we care about, like charities. But that is a debate we shouldn’t cut in a back room, shouldn’t hatch a secret plan like ObamaCare. We should do it out in the public view where the public can participate.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s exactly what I’m suggesting, having it in public before the election so voters can have that information before they make up their minds.

RYAN: We think the best way to get — look, I’ve been in Congress a number of years. I’ve been on the Ways and Means Committee for 12 years. And we think the best way to do this is to get this framework in place, and then negotiate, work with Democrats, work with people across the aisle, have these kinds of hearings, have this conversation to get this objective.

There are really only two ways to look at this refusal to specify which loopholes they plan to do away with:

1) they really have no plan, no idea what they’re going to do — they might as well say they want to ride a unicorn over Rainbow Bridge to Ice Cream Sundae Land and if you vote for them, you can go too. Or,

2) Lyin’ Paul Ryan is asking that you trust him and Etch-a-Sketch. Just trust that they’ll be looking out for YOUR best interests if they’re elected. And pay no attention to the fact that their budget doesn’t add up with any arithmetic in the known universe — or that those tax cuts for the rich (which Romney says are not tax cuts for the rich) will have to be paid for somehow.

For the record, yesterday in an interview with Mitt Romney, David Gregory got no information from Romney either, on the Secret-Awesome Romney Plan or the loopholes he plans to shut down.

Here’s the truth of the matter:


image: thepoliticalfreakshow

Paul Ryan wants to cut taxes on the wealthy and cut spending on the poor

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Kevin Drum outlines Paul Ryan’s Grim Vision for America:

But it gets worse: He wants to cut all other spending—aside from Social Security and Medicare—by 70 percent. And even that understates things. He’s made it plain that he doesn’t want to see substantial cuts in the defense budget, which means that the domestic budget would probably have to go down to something like 1.5 percent of GDP. That’s a cut of 80 percent or so and it affects everything. It affects prisons, food assistance, education, the FBI, assistance to the needy, courts, child nutrition, drug abuse counseling, FEMA, rape prevention, autism programs, housing, border control, student loans, roads and bridges, Head Start, college scholarships, unemployment insurance, and job training. Everything. Most of these programs would simply disappear, and the ones that remained would be shriveled and nearly useless.

Nor is that all. Despite his professed concern over the deficit, Ryan also want to cut taxes on America’s richest families. The Joint Economic Committee took a look at Ryan’s tax plan and concluded that it would most likely raise taxes on the poor and the middle classes and cut taxes on the wealthy.

Let this sink in. This is Paul Ryan’s vision for America. This is what Ryan means by “protecting the weak.” This is the core of Ryan’s tough choices: He wants to cut taxes on the wealthy and cut spending on the poor.

Can you see why the Nuns on a Bus have a problem with Paul Ryan? Remember GOP voters, Ayn Rand’s ideology (the Ryan Budget) is incompatible with Christianity.

Wake up, Teapublican base voters

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via

…and the billionaires (and their Republican politicians) certainly don’t care about your little social issues either. That’s called ‘lip service’ to get you into the voting booth.

Once upon a time, there was an American middle class

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From a Pew study showing that America’s middle class is receiving less of the nation’s income than it did 40 years ago — 17% less:

The new study reviewed 2010 data from the Census Bureau and Federal Reserve, defining “middle class” as the tier of adults whose household income falls between two-thirds and double the national median income, or $39,418 to $118,255 in 2010 for a family of three. By this definition, “middle class” makes up about 51 percent of U.S. adults, down from 61 percent in 1971.

In 1970, the share of U.S. income that went to the middle class was 62 percent, while wealthier Americans received just 29 percent. But by 2010, the middle class garnered 45 percent of the nation’s income, tying a low first reached in 2006, compared to 46 percent for upper-income Americans.

Since 2000, the median income for America’s middle class has fallen from $72,956 to $69,487.

— The Associated Press: Middle class share of America’s income shrinking

You know the median incomes of the wealthiest didn’t fall in the past 40 years — and they get to take home more of their incomes because of the way they’re taxed compared to the way we’re taxed ($77,000 deductions for horses, for example). Look at these numbers:

  • 1970: middle class share of U.S. income was 62% to a 29% share for the wealthy.
  • 2010: middle class share of U.S. income was 45% to a 46% share for the wealthy.

Let’s not pretend Romney and the billionaires who want to buy the White House aren’t looking to take most, if not all, of that remaining 45% income share that’s currently going to the dying middle class.

But let’s keep pretending there isn’t a massive, ongoing bottom-to-top income redistribution happening — just keep saying job creators and trickle down.

We can thank patriots like this for supporting their own demise over the past several decades:

On the GOP: “The capture of one of our great parties by fanatics is nothing to celebrate.”

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Robert Reich laments the insanity that has taken over the Republican Party (emphasis below is mine):

We’re witnessing the capture by fanatics of what was once a great and important American political party. 

The Republican Party platform committee now includes a provision calling for a constitutional amendment banning all abortions, without an exception for rape or incest. This is basically Missouri senatorial candidate Todd Akin’s position. (At least the GOP platform doesn’t assert that women’s bodies automatically reject “legitimate” rapists’ sperm.)

Paul Ryan, Romney’s selection for vice president, has co-sponsored 38 anti-abortion measures while in the House of Representatives, including several containing no exception for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. 

But the GOP’s fanaticism goes far beyond the its growing absolutism about abortion.

Ryan’s proposed budget, approved by almost all House Republicans, is also an exercise in fanaticism. It replaces Medicare with vouchers that won’t possibly keep up with rising healthcare costs — thereby shifting costs directly on to the elderly. 

That budget also harms the poor and rewards the rich, but does little or nothing to reduce the federal budget deficit. Over 60 percent of its spending cuts come out of programs for lower-income Americans. Its tax cuts for the rich reduce revenues by $4.6 trillion over the decade while saving the typical millionaire hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

The GOP’s looniness doesn’t even stop there. Republicans remain unwaivering in their support of state laws allowing or encouraging the profiling of Latinos. And unrelenting in their war against gay rights. 

It’s not just women, seniors, budget hawks, the poor, Latinos, and gays who are catching on to the Republicans’ extremism. Americans who don’t fall into one of these categories are becoming alarmed, too — as they should.*

Although the GOP lurch to the right-wing margin of America may bode well for Democrats this coming Election Day, it bodes ill for America. The capture of one of our great parties by fanatics is nothing to celebrate. A democracy needs at least two sane political parties.

*See: GOP War on the Middle Class: the RNC dumps support for the mortgage interest deduction

GOP War on the Middle Class: the RNC dumps support for the mortgage interest deduction

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Businessweek reports that ahead of the Republican National Convention, the GOP dumped the mortgage interest deduction from its platform (but kept donations to “charity” – like to the Mormon Church!):

While Romney was caving to pressure from Paul supporters, the platform committee itself made a surprising move. The GOP refused to put itself on record as supporting the mortgage interest deduction, writes my Bloomberg News colleague James Rowley. The idea is that Romney’s tax plans rest on eliminating deductions and loopholes he has not specified, so the party wants to give a President Romney ample room to maneuver by taking interest on mortgages off its protected list. However, on the same day, the platform group voted to retain its support for deductions granted to charitable donations.

The mortgage interest deduction is the nation’s largest tax benefit. The government forgoes about $90 billion per year to the millions of American homeowners that claim it. It is cherished by the middle class, and some economists consider it the bedrock of the housing market. The mortgage interest deduction has many critics, but by virtue of its popularity among voters, killing it would amount to political suicide. That’s why you’ll find plenty of politicians who advocate getting rid of tax credits and loopholes, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a single one publicly opposing the mortgage interest deduction. (via: sarahlee310)

It seems the faithful Fox / Rush audience of the Republican voting base won’t wake up until the GOP actually punches them in the gut. I wonder if this news might be that gut punch.

“Nuns on a Bus” want Mitt Romney to join them — even for one hour

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Think Progress reports “The group behind the Nuns On A Bus tour that highlighted the ill-effects of the House Republican budget in congressional districts across the country is now setting its sights on the party’s presidential candidate, inviting Mitt Romney to spend a day with the nuns to learn about the plight of America’s poorest citizens.”

“Romney has endorsed the House GOP budget plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). It was that plan, which includes deep cuts to food stamps and other safety net programs that benefit the middle class, that NETWORK’s Nuns On A Bus tour targeted, with [Sister Simone] Campbell and other sisters blasting it as “immoral” at the tour’s conclusion in Washington D.C. Romney has also proposed massive tax cuts for the rich that would likely come at the expense of lower- and middle-class families, which would see higher taxes or significant cuts to the programs they depend on.

“Those policies, Campbell told ThinkProgress, show that Romney “doesn’t have clue” about the struggles the poor face. “The fact is, his policies shift wealth to the upper class,” she said. “Yes, it hurts the middle class, but it devastates those at the margins of our society.” If Romney were to accept their invitation, Campbell said she would take him to places like St. Augustine’s in Cleveland, where food programs “provide a hand up” to the community’s neediest members. “He thinks they’re lazy,” Campbell said, in reference to Romney’s misleading welfare reform ad. “It is hard work to keep things together when you’re poor. He doesn’t have a clue. Let him talk to them, and maybe they’ll touch his heart. And his mind too.”

“The Romney campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Campbell said she “lives in hope” that he will accept, even if he spends only an hour with the group. “I’ll take whatever I can get,” Campbell said. “He should accept.””

Unfortunately Mitt, more than most, does need to step outside the gates of his lavish lifestyle to understand exactly how the peasantry lives. But spending time with nuns in service to the poor is something that will never happen. There’s no upside to this kind of PR for a Republican candidate, and especially for Willard Romney — even if it’s very clear that he could benefit from some experience and education on America’s working class and income / poverty:

Flashback (July/2012): Romney completely unaware of what waiters and waitresses earn, calls them “middle class”

Yes, the ACA cuts $716 billion to Medicare — but the ACA’s cuts don’t touch Medicare benefits

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Republicans are attacking the passage of the Affordable Care Act for its $716 billion in cuts to Medicare, and they’re desperately trying to make it seem like the cuts are to Medicare benefits. Sarah Kliff breaks down those cuts and looks at the policy rationale behind them.

“The majority of the cuts…come from reductions in how much Medicare reimburses hospitals and private health insurance companies… The whole idea of Medicare Advantage was to drive down the cost of health insurance for the elderly as private insurance companies competing for seniors’ business. That’s not what happened. By 2010, the average Medicare Advantage per-patient cost was 117 percent of regular fee-for-service. The Affordable Care Act gives those private plans a haircut and tethers reimbursement levels to the quality of care administered, and patient satisfaction.”

“Another big chunk comes from the hospitals. The health law changed how Medicare calculates what they get reimbursed for various services, slightly lowering their rates over time. Hospitals agreed to these cuts because they knew, at the same time, they would likely see an influx of paying patients with the Affordable Care Act’s insurance expansion… The rest of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicare cuts are a lot smaller.”

“It’s worth noting that there’s one area these cuts don’t touch: Medicare benefits.”

— Romney’s right: Obamacare cuts Medicare by $716 billion. Here’s how.

And that is where the Paul Ryan / Romney plan and the President’s budget part ways. Romney-Ryan (if Romney agrees with Ryan’s plan today, who knows?) would cut benefits by implementing a voucher system, meaning seniors would need to shop the innovation of the free market to find their own private insurance. That sounds like an exciting adventure, doesn’t it?

Michael Waldholz explains the reality-based issue with that plan:

“The problem is that its just as likely insurers will cherry pick only the healthiest folks. The sickest folks who generate Medicare’s main costs will stay in the traditional plan, meaning the government won’t be able to spread its responsibility over a large enough pool to keep spending down. In other words, nothing will have changed unless the vouchers are priced high enough for insurers to make a profit. I don’t see the savings there.”

That’s exactly the problem with our current health care system, which the ACA’s implementation seeks to begin to fix. By the way, where are Mitt Romney’s tax returns?


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On Medicare: Romney and Ryan are “very similar” and “very different”

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Steve Benen reports on the impressive clarity of Team Romney-Ryan on Medicare:

Mitt Romney, yesterday, asked about Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan: “[M]y plan for Medicare, it’s very similar to his plan for Medicare.”

Romney surrogate John Sununu, this morning, asked about the similarities in Romney’s Medicare plan to Paul Ryan’s policy: “But it’s very different.”

I’m glad we got this straightened out. Here I thought the Romney-Ryan campaign might have a muddled message on the issue they’ve put at the center of the 2012 presidential race.

To help clarify matters, Romney’s policy director, Lanhee Chen, told TPM, “Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have always been fully committed to repealing Obamacare, ending President Obama’s $716 billion raid on Medicare and tackling the serious fiscal challenges our country faces.”

Except, as even the most ignorant policy directors surely know, every penny of savings Obama found in Medicare has been included in Paul Ryan’s budget, which Romney endorsed. (And if they repeal Obamacare, they’ll take away benefits for seniors.)

Andrew Sullivan reviews Romney’s new Medicare ad:

…$716 billion is how much Obamacare cuts from Medicare spending – but the ad implies this is some kind of cut to Medicare recipient’s benefits; it’s not. Pema Levy explains: Cuts made in the Affordable Care Act are to future growth and come from reimbursement reductions to hospitals, Medicaid prescription drugs and private insurance plans under Medicare Advantage. Ryan’s cuts come from shifting Medicare from its current form to subsidies for seniors to buy care themselves.

The Ryan plan also makes the same cuts, only by instituting a voucher program, all of which Romney is trying to murky-up by saying he’ll put that $716 billion “back”. The bottom line is they’re spinning another whopper here, just like in the welfare ads.

If the Romney campaign didn’t spin whoppers daily, they’d have nothing to deflect attention away from his business “experience” with Bain Capital and the 2002 Olympics, or why he won’t release his tax returns like every other presidential candidate. And Romney would also have to actually talk about how different his vision for America is from President Obama’s.

Paul Ryan’s history and his family’s history make his entire political career a sham

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“[Paul Ryan's] entire life, and the history of his entire family, makes a lie out of everything the man has said in his political career, and a sham out of every policy position he purports to hold. It seems to be there used to be a word for that. What I do know is that, in 20 years, a lot of people in the Beltway who are in my business today are going to look at what they’ve written and said about this faker, and drink themselves into early graves.” — Charles P. Pierce

Charles P. Pierce lays out the ugly facts:

  • Born wealthy — has “amassed a fortune of “between three and $7.7 million” without having held a more lucrative job than “Congressman” at any point in his adult life.”
  • His family owes their wealth to government highway construction: “The Ryan workload from 1910 until the rural interstate Highway System was completed 60 years later, was mostly Highway construction,” and who said on Saturday morning, alongside the King of Bain,”I’m proud to stand with a man who understands what it takes to foster job creation in our economy, someone who knows from experience, that if you have a small business — you did build that.”
  • Bought a mansion which is cared for by a federal agency, the National Park Service, because it’s listed on National Register of Historic Places.
  • Mr. Ryan reported two tax-deferred college savings plans, with a combined value of between $150,000 and $300,000. He also reported two investment partnerships worth, in total, between $350,000 and $750,000, mostly containing shares of stock in well-known companies, including Apple, Goodrich, Kraft Foods, Visa and Whole Foods. Both partnerships were formed by Mr. Ryan and other family members to manage assets left by his grandparents and an aunt.
  • Mrs. Ryan has reported receiving a trust after her mother died in 2010 that is valued between $1 million and $5 million, according to a letter Mr. Ryan filed with his latest financial disclosure. Mrs. Ryan also has longstanding interests in several mining and oil exploration investments in Oklahoma and Texas managed by her father, Dan Little, a lawyer in Oklahoma whose clients include oil and gas companies. Those investments generated as much as $150,000 in income last year.

Just follow the money, any of it, to where Romney-Ryan have already or would like to redistribute it from the bottom to the top for their own personal gain. Less government though. You built that though. The deficit though. Too much spending (on the poors) though. Go tea party.

Dream Team: Romney pays little / no federal tax, Ryan thinks the rich shouldn’t pay federal tax

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Matthew O’Brien calculates Romney’s taxes (on the ONE year we have) with Paul Ryan’s tax plan and finds: Mitt Romney would pay 0.82 percent in taxes under Paul Ryan’s Plan:

“In 2010 — the only year we have seen a full return from him — Romney would have paid an effective tax rate of around 0.82 percent under the Ryan plan, rather than the 13.9 percent he actually did. How would someone with more than $21 million in taxable income pay so little? Well, the vast majority of Romney’s income came from capital gains, interest, and dividends. And Ryan wants to eliminate all taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends.

“[...] It might seem impossible to fund the government when the super-rich pay no taxes. That is accurate. Ryan would actually raise taxes on the bottom 30 percent of earners, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, but that hardly fills the revenue hole he would create. The solution? All but eliminate all government outside of Social Security and defense — a point my colleagueDerek Thompson has made in incredible chart form…”

Steven Dennis at Rollcall agrees, saying Ryan’s plan “would have slashed Mitt Romney’s effective tax rate to about 1 percent in 2010″:

“The Ryan tax cut, which would shave about 90 percent off of Romney’s tax bill, would result from the Wisconsin Republican’s “Roadmap for America’s Future” proposal to eliminate taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest. Since about 95 percent of Romney’s $21.6 million income came from those sources in 2010, he would pay no taxes on the vast majority of his earnings. It’s not certain exactly how low Romney’s tax bill would go, but his income from other sources amounts to about $1 million, and Ryan’s plan would set a new top rate of 25 percent. Romney’s total tax bill would have dropped from the $3 million that he paid to a few hundred thousand dollars if Ryan’s plan had been in effect. Ryan also proposes eliminating the estate tax, which would benefit Romney’s heirs by tens of millions of dollars.”

Kevin Drum piles on:

“The Joint Economic Committee released an analysis today of the tax implications of Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity,” based partly on work from the Tax Policy Center, and you will be unsurprised at their conclusions. The chart [below], a rough conversion from JEC’s raw numbers into percentages, tells the tale: if you’re part of the middle class, your taxes will probably go up. If you’re rich, your taxes will go way, way down.

“[...] In any case, if Ryan thinks this is unfair, all he has to do is release a plan of his own that can be scored in the normal way. The fact that he consistently refuses to do so tells you all you need to know about how serious he really is about this stuff. Answer: not at all.”

If this chart doesn’t illustrate “class warfare” and bottom-to-top income redistribution, I don’t know what does.


image: motherjones